Exp. Date, the rat wrote:I think i have found a link between this book and Interesting Times. When one of Ponders associates types in 'Why' to Hex he gets the answer 'Because' and wasn't this the answer that Lobsang gets out of the Way?

Y'know, I always thought that bit was a parody of a scene from "The General" episode of "The Prisoner," when No. 6 asks the same written question to the General, one of those classic 1960's blinking lights computers, and the machine self-destructs, Star Trek style because it can't answer it.

Exp. Date, the rat wrote:I think i have found a link between this book and Interesting Times. When one of Ponders associates types in 'Why' to Hex he gets the answer 'Because' and wasn't this the answer that Lobsang gets out of the Way?

Nah - my mother used to come up with that answer. It's typical mom-ese.

I tend to agree with tony here, I don't think there's any kind of mystery in that answer. I've heard it many times in movies, tv shows etc.. someone asks why and the other says "because!" when he doesn't know the answer or he simply doesn't want to say it for whatever reasons, or when he only wants the other to stop asking questions, and just leave him alone... Sometimes they also say it as a sort of fatalistic answer, something like "Because that's how it is..."
They use it very often..

Exp. Date, the rat wrote:I think i have found a link between this book and Interesting Times. When one of Ponders associates types in 'Why' to Hex he gets the answer 'Because' and wasn't this the answer that Lobsang gets out of the Way?

Nah - my mother used to come up with that answer. It's typical mom-ese.

I tend to agree with tony here, I don't think there's any kind of mystery in that answer. I've heard it many times in movies, tv shows etc.. someone asks why and the other says "because!" when he doesn't know the answer or he simply doesn't want to say it for whatever reasons, or when he only wants the other to stop asking questions, and just leave him alone... Sometimes they also say it as a sort of fatalistic answer, something like "Because that's how it is..." They use it very often..

Dotsie wrote:I don't want to sound like a know-it-all, but isn't that saying actually very famous? Maybe it's just particularly popular amongst students (which I seem to have always been in some form).

I already knew the saying and therefore wasn't surprised at the procrastinators.

Tony Hillerman also has a book titled A Thief of Time set on the Navajo Reservation.

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.” – Blaise Pascal

Tonyblack wrote:Tony Hillerman also has a book titled A Thief of Time set on the Navajo Reservation.

Yes, and this is (arguably) Hillerman's best book in a long-running series about two Navajo Reservation cops, one older and more "Americanized," the other younger and more "traditional." who solve various tribes that take place in the southwest. Highly recommended. The U.S. "Mystery" series did a pretty good adaptation of ATOT several years ago.

J-I-B

Last edited by raisindot on Tue Aug 17, 2010 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Dotsie wrote:I don't want to sound like a know-it-all, but isn't that saying actually very famous? Maybe it's just particularly popular amongst students (which I seem to have always been in some form).

Probably one of those southern sayings which never made it up to the real north.

How about, "I'll go to the foot of my stairs!", or "If ifs and buts were pots and pans there'd be no use for tinkers." Do you know those two sayings?

"Disliking Carrot would be like kicking a puppy.""You kicked a puppy," Lobsang said accusingly.